Filter bubble

In the paper

“Notably, there are a great many contexts where such homophily can be understood as beneficial:”

What the sources say

• Supported

  The Concluding Remarks say that selective exposure may benefit media and citizens depending on the values and conditions at stake. The sections on participatory and liberal recommenders give distinct examples: like-minded filtering may help marginalised voices organise, while focused recommendations may deepen expertise. These passages support the claim in the paper’s context of news recommendations. (LLM, conf=0.87)

  cites Helberger, 2019 source

In the paper

“For Twitter, comprehensive maps of follower connections in the Australian (Bruns et al., 2017) and Norwegian Twitterspheres (Bruns & Enli, 2018) have similarly shown the existence of interest-driven clusters of dense interconnection around topics from politics to sports, but point to few significant disconnects across the overall network.”

What the sources say

• Partly supported

  The Analysis and Network Structure sections describe densely connected, predominantly thematic clusters in the Australian follower network, including politics and sports. The paper also describes some clusters as comparatively isolated, but does not establish that there are few significant disconnects across the overall network; its principal map focuses on 255,000 best-connected accounts. The Norwegian findings belong to the separately cited source and are not assessed here. (LLM, conf=0.82)

  cites Bruns et al., 2017 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
• Supported

  For the Norwegian Twittersphere, the Conclusion and outlook identifies clusters based largely on thematic interests and says that, despite densely connected regions, accounts follow a diverse range of others. The Network structure section describes clusters around politics and sports and says the network is fairly well connected throughout. The separate Australian citation is not being assessed here. (LLM, conf=0.93)

  cites Bruns & Enli, 2018 source

In the paper

“While the empirical evidence does not support the existence of echo chambers and filter bubbles as actual, observable phenomena in public communication”

• Also stated in: § SOCIAL AND POLITICAL RELEVANCE AND IMPACT · boosted

  “there is a pronounced absence of evidence that genuine filter bubbles or echo chambers are real, outside of highly specific and unusual contexts”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Bruns, 2019
• Partly supported

  The Discussion (page unavailable) reports little evidence of echo chambers across the full media environment, but identifies a small group for whom an echo chamber is more likely. The Background (page unavailable) says the study focuses on people’s information choices rather than algorithmic filtering, so it does not support the claim about filter bubbles or the categorical claim that neither phenomenon is observable. (LLM, conf=0.90)

  cites Dubois & Blank, 2018 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured
• Partly supported

  The 6. CONCLUSION says there is no empirical evidence warranting strong worries about filter bubbles, and the section on prevalence of self-selected personalisation says that, if echo chambers exist, their walls are porous. That supports skepticism about their prevalence or effects, but not the stronger claim that empirical evidence does not support their existence as observable phenomena in public communication. The paper does not confine their existence to highly specific or unusual contexts. (LLM, conf=0.87)

  cites Zuiderveen Borgesius et al., 2016 sourceExperimental — accuracy not yet measured

In the paper

“Pariser largely fails to provide a clear definition for the 'filter bubble' concept; it remains vague and founded in anecdotes.”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Pariser, 2011a

In the paper

“This terminological confusion -about the exact definitions of either term in itself, and about their interrelationship with each other -has significantly hindered our ability to test them through rigorous research.”

In the paper

“However, in such recent discussions the term 'filter bubble' is no longer primarily applied to search results, as it was in Pariser's original conceptualisation; today, filter bubbles are more frequently envisaged as disruptions to information flows in online and especially social media.”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Pariser, 2015
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Newman et al., 2016

In the paper

“at least for search, it seems that the filter bubble idea has deflated: far from the vision (or threat) of an individually unique Daily Me, personalisation in general and newsspecific search results still appears to be exceptionally limited.”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Nechushtai and Lewis, 2018
• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Haim et al., 2018 source
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Krafft et al., 2018

In the paper

“the originator of the 'echo chamber' concept, the legal scholar Cass Sunstein, never clearly defines the latter term either.”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Sunstein, 2001

In the paper

“This definitional blur at the heart of the concept did not prevent it from gaining considerable currency in scientific as well as mainstream societal discourse, however:”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Obama, 2017

In the paper

“In other words, the localised homophily that is likely to exist in specific contexts and spaces does not fundamentally undermine the general heterogeneity of the hybrid media ecology, and cannot usually prevent its participants from encountering -willingly or unwillingly -a broad range of information and perspectives.”

In the paper

“As a result, network science studies that look beyond such inherently ideological communities find significantly less homophily and polarisation in non-political contexts, and also detect considerable crossconnection between the groups that populate those ideological spaces.”

In the paper

“For social media, on the other hand, the debate about filter bubbles and echo chambers continues, with various studies both supporting and denying their existence.”

In the paper

“Notably, especially in comparison with earlier concerns about the fragmentation of national mediaspheres as a result of the multiplication of cable channels or online information sources, or about social stratification due to diverging media literacies amongst different parts of the population, the echo chamber and filter bubble concepts clearly centre on the individual media user and their tre”

In the paper

“such large-scale, longitudinal, survey-based observations may be valid at an aggregate level, but show considerable variation for individual communities and individuals:”

In the paper

“"The myth of the filter bubble", above all, "is one thing: a big misunderstanding" (Meineck, 2018, n.p.;my translation)”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Meineck, 2018

In the paper

“Mainstream media have operationalised it to suggest that only their orderly and professional gatekeeping procedures, and not the collective and self-organising gatewatching processes on social media, have the ability to sufficiently inform citizens, for example”

In the paper

“as O'Hara and Stevens describe it, "a networked individual would have to enter the echo chamber and somehow lose his or her diverse connections, replacing them with more and stronger connections within the echo chamber"”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites O'Hara and Stevens
• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites [2015]

In the paper

“Further, such moral panics often also serve as part of the rear-guard defence of the old elites that stand to lose the most from any change to the status quo”

In the paper

“This means that, contrary to concerns about the fragmentation of society as a result of filter bubbles, for many users social media have positively increased the diversity of their information diet, and prevent them from becoming locked into ideological monocultures.”

In the paper

“Concepts like 'echo chamber' and 'filter bubble' -which, notably, were introduced not by scholars in media, communication, internet, or related fields of study, but by authors working well outside their area of expertise (Pariser is an activist and tech entrepreneur, Sunstein is a legal scholar)”

In the paper

“For societies where ideological boundaries align with clear economic, ethnic, or religious divisions, and where bipolar two-party systems prevent the emergence of centrist consensus alternatives to the polarised status quo, this challenge is especially acute.”

In the paper

“the claim that audiences and voters diverging from these well-trodden paths do so because they are caught in technologically created filter bubbles and can no longer be reached by reasoned, sensible argument also has the considerable added benefit that the journalists and politicians making that claim are never required to confront their own failings”

In the paper

“establishment politicians have used it to assert that only their welldesigned party structures, and not the populist and/or grassroots models of their opponents, can provide strong and stable leadership for their countries”

In the paper

“otherwise, the network structures of both Twitterspheres facilitate a largely unencumbered flow of information across the entire user base and would therefore be unable to support the existence of filter bubbles.”

In the paper

“If there is a filter at all, then, it is not the algorithmic filter postulated by the 'filter bubble' concept, which prevents us altogether from seeing 'different' content that runs counter to our own worldviews -rather, the more critical filter exists (more weakly formed perhaps in the societal mainstream, more strongly developed on the extreme fringes) in our heads, and variously leads us to ad”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Hall, 1980

In the paper

“the relative prevalence of the filter bubble idea in different countries' political debates may also indicate the depth of broader concerns about their political and democratic processes”

In the paper

“since dial-in bulletin board systems and the early Usenet first became popular, it has been this very opportunity to connect with like-minded others that has attracted users to computer-mediated communication platforms (e.g., Baym, 2000).”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Baym, 2000 source

In the paper

“In order to result in a notable divergence in the information diets experienced by members and nonmembers of an echo chamber or filter bubble, they would actively have to both seek out engagement with like-minded others (in other words, pursue selective exposure), and stay away from those who might introduce them to alternative views (that is, practice selective avoidance).”

In the paper

“These moral panics point to the persistence of a simplistic and naïve understanding of media effects both amongst the general public and amongst media and political actors.”

In the paper

“Fact checks may still be valuable to prevent mainstream users from drifting off to the fringes -but for those already on the fringe they only serve to deepen their disconnect from rational public debate.”

In the paper

“such transformations are not fuelled simply by surface factors such as the communication technologies and platforms preferred by these new political actors and their established opponents, respectively -rather, they are an expression of far more fundamental social, economic, societal, and political challenges”

In the paper

“While such earlier concerns tackled aggregate, population-wide trends, therefore, these new phenomena are driven by individualised personalisation processes (and possible user interventions in such personalisation).”

In the paper

“while not neutral, the technologies and their providers are neither inherently good nor evil in this, but can be employed by their users to serve socially and societally beneficial as well as disruptive ends”

In the paper

“have served to obscure considerably more pressing societal problems, and to misdirect scholarly, journalistic, and regulatory attention to the technological rather than social and societal factors underpinning these problems”

In the paper

“such network science approaches mainly tend to look for evidence of homophily: a preference for interconnections between participants with similar interests, views, and ideologies.”

In the paper

“Phenomena such as homophily (as well as heterophily) can be readily observed in contemporary communicative spaces, as can the algorithmic shaping and personalisation of newsfeeds and information streams (as well users' efforts to control such shaping).”

In the paper

“That this message is still not getting through to the general public shows the seductive nature of moral panic narratives, but must also count as a failing for media and communication research.”